1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an information processing technique for unified management of licenses that make application programs operable.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, it is accepted practice to assign licenses for making application programs operable to bona fide purchasers, in order to avoid unauthorized use of application programs.
Assigning a license normally involves issuing one piece of license information (license key) per application program (hereinafter, simply “application”) Installation of an application in a device such as a printer is only possible when the number input by the user matches the license key number.
One form of issuing a license key and installing an application involves, for example, applying to the application developer for issuance of a key number, which is then input as a license key when installing an application.
There are also licenses known as site licenses and corporate licenses. These make it possible to install a single application in a predetermined number of devices where the application is purchased by a business or the like.
A method has also been proposed that involves generating a plurality of license keys from a plurality of pieces of program information and a single piece of apparatus identification (ID) information, and generating a license key packaged from the plurality of generated license keys (e.g., see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2002-215253).
Further, a method has been proposed that involves generating a single license file for a plurality of devices (e.g., see Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2005-327196).
However, while the above conventional techniques enable set license keys to be issued, the configuration of the license keys cannot be freely changed.
Problems due to manual management also arise when installing applications in large users. For example, not only is a commensurate amount of time required to input license keys due to manual management, but human error occurs in the form of incorrectly input license keys.
The present invention, which was made in consideration of the above problems, has as its object to provide an information processing technique that makes it possible to unify the issuance of license keys or license files according to device model and application function.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an information processing technique that eliminates both the time required to input data due to manual management and input errors by downloading unified license keys and unified license files to devices.